prairiechickin
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Posts posted by prairiechickin
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Wall's Saskatchewan Party passed legislation in their first term allowing them to be sole arbitar of who was an 'essential service', and hence, who was eligible to strike. It was all a bit much, and was challenged by many unions, and eventually struck down under a Constitutional challenge. Outside of Saskatchewan people likely never saw the newsshots of Brad Wall admitting his new government went too far, they were young and full of beans, and in future they will only try stunts like this with the cooperation of labour. I found the court-challenge interersting, but I found the Premier's contrition refreshing and to the point.
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I have been to Dieppe twice, and I have seen this documentary. The biggest question in my mind is why any single Canadian soldier would volunteer to land in Dieppe.
If memory serves, they were volunteered for the mission not knowing the destination. The intent was to raid the French coast to cause a little chaos, scoop some intel, and kill a few Nazis, the perfect sort of day trip for some camp-weary Canadians. According to most observers, cover was blown early in the mission and it should have been scrubbed, but they went ahead anyway under heavy fire from clifftop instillations. Those that made it inland were captured, a nice reward for three or four hours of combat.
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I'm no expert on this topic, but one of the best no-bs sources I've found is Barry Broadfoot's 'Six War Years: Canadians in World War Two'. These are excerpts from the guys that were there. Its only one chapter, but the sense you get is that the Canadians were more than trained, they were itching for a fight. Most had signed in '39 and had endured over two years of training, they were over-trained and ready to get out of camp and fight some Nazis. Mount B screwed this mission up, but it still remained useful on D-Day. Whoever made the comment about the lieutenants figuring it out was spot on, once you've survived that mess you know what to do different the next time.
Three of my great-uncles went in that day with the South Saskatchewan Regiment, all my Grandmother's brothers which is why I know the story, and all three made it out with the usual brovado. All three were there again on D-Day, and that had to help. Two of them made it through, Clifford Skeates was killed a few days later near Caen. For all of its failings, despite its attempts at leadership, the guys that survived Dieppe may have been the critical element on the beaches of Normandy, and that alone may have made it worth the Canadian lives in 1942.
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The right wing Wall government in Saskatchewan has hardly been quick to dismantle the NDP legacy of Crown Corporations, mostly because they make economic sense and save/make bazillions of dollars every year for the province. Its nice to have your vehicle insurance, your power bill, and your heat bill governed at cost, and responsible to the Leg, rather than shareholders. CCs rule.
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AusKanada:
Good post. You have summarized the problems pretty well.
It is time to end the reserve system, and help these unfortunate Canadians to integrate with the rest of Canadian society.
As a taxpayer, I for one, am tired of watching as tens of millions are pumped into this reserve (not exaggerating) for a new school, or new houses, new vehicles, etc etc...only to watch as the people here wreck them because they have no understanding of responsibility or accountability.
These are things you learn when you have to work to earn everything that you have, and when that is removed, respect is gone...respect for yourself, for others, and for property of same.
None of that gets solved until we wake up and realize that government has created this problem, and the way out is to cut government funding entirely, and force people to move where the jobs are.
greyman,
Welcome to the Board, its nice to have a real First Nation's voice here. While I agree with you regarding the wastefulness of the current federal funding structure on Reserves, I don't agree with doing away with the reserves entirely. The model we have is clearly broken, but I don't think we should throw out the baby with the bathwater. I think its important to retain reserves so Native peoples still have a home base, so to speak. Under the numbered treaties, the reserves were never intended to last forever, they were designed to warehouse the older generations until the younger ones could be assimilated into Canadian society. It didn't work out that way, but one of the few useful things the reserve system accomplished was to allow Native peoples a refuge to keep being Native until such time as they could regain their voice. I think that's important, and that alone is enough reason to retain reserves.
But clearly the fund-the-band-council-and-hope-for-the-best approach doesn't work. If you've read any of my posts here you'll know I'm not big on the 'living treaties' nonsense, but here's one change I would like to see. Replace the $5 annual token per person payment with something real, like $5000. Allow reserve members access to the same social services and health care as all Canadians, regardless of location. Cut funding to band councils and allow Natives to construct their own governanace model on reserves. Let them tax and regulate themselves. As long as the money comes from Ottawa, people will tolerate the Chief in the Big SUV, once its their own money being wasted, accountability will follow. If the reserve can't generate enough funds to support itself, then people will move to town, simple as that. The reserve will still be there as a home base for the Band, but it will no longer be an atificially funded ghetto in the middle of nowhere.
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You're losing me in the acronyms here, but I'm not sure why you think the average Canadian needs to carry concealed waepons. I bring my hunting guns out around August to sight them in and prepare ammo for the fall hunting season, and I have friends that shoot more regularly because they like to punch paper. Beyond target shooting and hunting I'm not sure I agree with people being armed all the time anywhere. To what purpose?
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Yes we do need to reform the system. These criminals that populate the jails of this nation cost the tax paying citizen lots and lots of money every year. In fact I think you will find, should you care to look into this accusation, that it costs more keep a criminal in jail for a year than the average citizen makes in a year. We have managed to turn a justice system into a penal system. Everything is mitigated six ways from Sunday to turn political correctness into the driving force of the entire system. Some will say that we built a system of justice that we could afford. I will say that we have turned the system upside down with political correctness.
Since I do not believe in the death penalty, I am compelled to support a system whereby the criminal was removed from our society in order to protect our society. Take them north, Baffin should be a southward place for criminals. All violent offenders should be permanently removed from society, never to return. No second chances, no three strike before you are out. Just pronounced guilty and "transported" to someplace they could never escape from.
As I've said, I'd shoot the bad ones like the mad dogs they are, but if that's too extreme for you sensitive types, may I suggest a ten foot helicopter drop to the Belcher Islands in Hudson's Bay. You get a three day supply of food, a Bic lighter, and a knife, good luck. The point is Canada is no longer wasting $100,000 per year covering your sorry ass every year -- that would be enough to provide dental care to 50 underpriviledged kids every year. The cost of those kids not enduring toothaches alone makes it worthwhile. So what is your preference, feeling better about a sick killer in jail, or some poor kid enduring a toothache because his single Mom doesn'nt have the money to take the kid to the dentist? Its a real choice, there's only so much money to go around for this stuff.
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I've read your posts Derek and I think we agree on most things regardng guns, but I'm not in favor of a backlash that sees us all armed to the teeth against a further ban/restriction on various weapons. I think we are on the cusp of turning back the stupidity of the long-gun registry, and that's great, but I for one would just like to see a return to normalcy where my huning weapons no longer put me on a special list that makes me a target of a SWAT intervention. I think we can agree that regular hunting guns should be available to those who just want to hunt, and for those who want to shoot handguns, there should be yet another classification. I personally do not want an American system where people can have hidden handguns in their glove compartment to settle road rage incidents. As a responsible hunter, I just don't see the need for such a classification. If I'm missing something, let me know.
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It's not about being feint of heart...
The fcat of the matter is that the Death Penalty frankly,is too good for the likes of Olsen and Bernardo.They don't/did'nt deserve the quick ending of their lives...
What they did deserve is to be treated in the harshest way possible for the rest of their earthly lives in prison...Hard Time,I'm talking about...
I'd gladly pay for that knowing these people are suffering daily rather than having their lives come to a swift ending under the guise of Justice...
And again,I come back to those who would have been put to death who were clearly innocent...
I'm not much on making a sick dog suffer, even if he bit me. Quick bullet to the brain then move on to other things. We have better things to spend our money on, like free dental care for underpriviledged kids.
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And for all of those hideous creatures I will give you a David Milgaard,Guy Paul Morin,Donald Marshall,and,a Stephen Truscott (who was on death row).all incarcerated for murders they did not commit.
When the state kills,even in the name of justice,they are representing the people of a nation.Indirectly,the execution of the innocent means we would have all been complicit in the murders of all the above because they were not guilty but were incorrectly convicted of sentences that would have invoked the death penalty...
I don't want to kill people when they come into this world and I don't think we ought to be assisting folks on the way out..
Doing actual "hard time" and limiting any rights of those who commit crimes( who have given up any claim to rights law abiding citizens enjoy) is another matter all together.
Milgaard, Morin and Truscott were innocent, Marshall was trying to rob an old man when the old guy turned the tables and knifed his accomplis. I have no sympathy for him. As for you squeamishness for killing, nobody's asking you to do it. I think we could have a chamber of sober second thought that would exclude the Milgaards of the system, the case was bogus from the get-go and that would be pretty obvious to any neutral observer. But for the rest of truly guilty, I'd be happy to shoot them myself as a public service. You might be too faint of heart to kill the Clifford Olsens of the world, I'd consider it a public service to put a bullet through his brain. Then we could use the $100,000 per year it costs to keep this waste of skin in jail to provide free dental care to underpriviledged children. This nonsense about every life being sacred is a bunch of crap -- the really sick ones should be shot like the mad dogs they are, and the rest of us should just get on with living.
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Yeah, economics is definitely a social science.
And has as much scientific credibility as psychology.
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Government debt in Canada started around the 1950's when only about .333% of the boomers were born. 0.666 of the boomers were still not even born yet let alone in any position of power to make any relevant decissions!
How do you suppose Canada paid for the Great Depression and World War Two? A secret cookie jar put away for a rainy day?
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However, here's where the Rape Culture makes itself obvious. You think it's a joke. From your mocking tone, you make it obvious that you did want it, so you obviously weren't assaulted. What you're doing is making it seem like those who resist sexual advances really actually do want it. No means yes. They just need a little "persuading".
This is a serious and alarming feature of our culture right now.
I'll bet you're a hoot on a date. Waddya doing next Saturday night?
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I suppose the Rape Culture is all pervasive though.
Tell us more about this "Rape Culture". I've never heard of it.
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I dunno. I kind of like the idea of walking into WalMart and having an entire cooler full of microbrews from all over the US.
But you're ignoring the possibility that some 17 year old might sneak past the less-than-vigilant WalMart cashier with some of these microbrews, and then civilization as we know it would ceast to exist.
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I don't judge Tommy too harshly for being a fire and brimstone, outspoken evangelical Christian either.
His belief and often preached faith that God created everything in seven days a few thousand years ago is just as valid now as it was then.
I have no idea where you got this from, he was a Baptist, and while he was renowned for his oratory, I've never heard anyone describe him as 'fire and brimstone'. He wasn't much on the afterlife, he was a Fabian socialist who was far more concerned with bettering conditions in the here and now.
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I'd prefer to just bring you and the rest of the troops home. This war has lasted longer than WW1 and WW2. And to what end? Is there a clear vision of what needs to be done?
I can second that, whatever the reason was for going over there in the first place, it was a spent force five years ago. Time to bring everybody home and leave Afganistan to its fate.
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My my, four pages on this? What a great to-do over nothing. The guy married a French woman, then applied for duel-citizenship to make it easier to travel back to France so the kids could see Grandma and Grandpa, and people question his loyalty to Canada? Give your head a shake.
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Is that the same tommy douglas that wanted to sterilize mentally and physically disabled canadians and ship them to camps???? that's just one of tommy douglas's many chilling ideas that his fans are trying to erase from history
Ya, that's the same guy. Go read a couple of books on the eugenics movement in Canada, and Douglas' MA theis, then come back and we'll chat.
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winning hearts & minds... one 'whizz' at a time!
My girlfriend and I fight over this term all the time. She's studied insurgencies and thinks this is the key to the successful outcome of any military undertaking. I haven't studied war in any detail, but I think its just a trite phrase that only obscures the mission, which is to defeat the enemy. Nobody worried about the hearts and minds of Germans as the Allies rolled over them in 1945. Nobody cared about the hearts and minds of the Japanese in '45, we nuked 'em and put and end to the madness. And while she would argue that these were straight-up military battles rather than insurgencies, I saw a two hour American Experience documentary on Custer last night that I thought made my point. The American Indian wars were basically insurgencies and nobody cared about the hearts and minds of the Native Americans, they were attacked and attacked until they gave up.
Seems to me this hearts and minds thing grew out of the war in Vietnam, and look how that worked out. I still think its a waste of time and resources to try and win over the resident population in any war, and Afganistan is just another example. Maybe someone that has been there can tell me different, but I think if you want to win a war treat all the locals as enemies. This doesn't mean you abuse them, just don't waste time trying to be their friends. Get in, crush any resistance mercilessly, and only when they are beaten to the point that resistence is futile do you give them a hand rebuilding. This is, of course, impossible in Afganistan as the insurgents keep pouring over the border from Pakistan like cockroaches, and as long as Pakistan remains a duplicitous 'ally', that border can never be closed. I'm glad we're out of there, and the Americans would be well advised to cut and run ASAP.
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I looked at the source of your statistics and moved on to other threads.
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True that, but I can't help contrast the everyday experience of those Americans on the ground in Afganistan with their critics sitting safe and warm behind a keyboard somewhere in the wilds of Toronto. Army Guy sounds like he's seen enough to pass judgement either way, cybercoma not so much.
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No. I'm pretty sure I can judge someone for pissing on human corpses without having to step in their shoes. It's disgusting and shameful.
Yes you seem to have no problem passing judgement on others regardless of whether or not you have any experience in the relevent field.
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Here is your assignment: compare stats of convicted Catholic clergy with stats of convicted non-Catholic clergy, and post a percentage relative to the size of their representation in religion in Canada.
I'm sure the Vatican has already crunched the numbers and they can be found at www.wedon'tscrewanymorekidsthanthoseotherguys.com/
Daylight savings time
in Health, Science and Technology
Posted
Ya, I'm from Saskatchewan and we don't monkey with time around here, it screws up the milkcows. I'm not in favor of the change overall because now I can't get home from work in time to watch Judge Judy.